No concessions should be made to reformers—conceptual understanding has no place in the discipline. The key difference between traditional and progressive approaches is that the former is fact-based, while the latter is concept-based. Facts provide the solid foundation for understanding.
An analogy: think of knowledge as a raster image, where pixels represent facts. If the image is low-resolution or incomplete, understanding comes from acquiring more pixels, not by guessing the missing parts. Guesswork, like in whole language reading approaches, is not a valid path to knowledge.
No concessions should be made to reformers—conceptual understanding has no place in the discipline. The key difference between traditional and progressive approaches is that the former is fact-based, while the latter is concept-based. Facts provide the solid foundation for understanding.
An analogy: think of knowledge as a raster image, where pixels represent facts. If the image is low-resolution or incomplete, understanding comes from acquiring more pixels, not by guessing the missing parts. Guesswork, like in whole language reading approaches, is not a valid path to knowledge.